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June 1, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:25:15
1081 Sunday Call In Show June 1 2008

Who is happier, liberals or conservatives? Plus, studying Proudhon and property rights, and FDR tension...

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Well, thank you everybody so much for joining.
This is Pinch Punch First Day of the Month, the 1st of June, 2007.
A mere six days until the Freedomain Radio BBQ. We have already strangled the stoats and we have bought the flamethrowers.
So we are almost, almost...
Set to roll.
I hope that you'll make it up.
up.
This is your last day.
If you want to eat at all, and you can RSVP at amiando.com forward slash free domain radio.
And I hope to see you then.
We have a good turnout of people, so I hope that you'll be able to make it.
So we're going to start with a little article here, though I guess it's kind of cool to say that we've had 5,500 free domain radio books bought or downloaded in, I guess, since early May, so three and a bit weeks.
Which is mondo cool, and so far it all seems to be working, the idea that I don't advertise but instead I hand out free books.
So far, so good.
Thank you again to those who dropped a few shackles my way at the end of last month, recovering FDR from the pit of kidney sales.
So, thank you so much.
Here is an article called The Happiness Gap by Margaret Wente.
And it's subtitled as Why Conservatives Are Gasp Happier Than Liberals.
And for those who are not in North America, conservatives are generally right-wingy kind of people and liberals are generally socialist-y, left-y kind of people, Democrats and Republicans and so on.
And I'll pick out some bits from the article which I think is interesting and also I like to quote stuff which supports stuff that I've been saying before because when you make random assertions, it's really nice when you accidentally, in a blindfolded kind of way, hit a target and can come up with some facts afterwards to back them up.
That's always fortuitous.
So let's get started.
Here's a bit of bad news from my latte-loving, liberal-leaning friends who believe that jobs in retail stink, traditional religion is for morons, and income inequality has made society a lot worse off.
You are a miserable bunch.
I don't mean miserable as in contemptible.
I mean that as a group, you are not particularly happy people.
In fact... You're far less likely to be happy with your lives than, say, a gun-owning truck driver who goes to church, shops at Walmart and makes half the money you do.
So says Arthur Brooks, who spent the past few years exploring what makes us happy.
This is counterintuitive to urban elites, he says, but we think nobody can be happy but us.
For breakfast earlier this week, Mr. Brooks, a political scientist at Syracuse University, yes, I share your skepticism, shared a few other surprises about happiness.
For example, despite their 35-hour work weeks and long vacations, the French are less happy than Americans.
Most Americans who work are amazingly happy with their jobs, even if they work at Walmart.
Happiness and income are not closely related, Christina.
Oh, sorry, my mistake.
Church-going people are happier than secular ones.
Married people happier than unmarried.
And people who give away their money, Christina, are the happiest of all.
Sorry?
Do you want a bigger allowance?
Actually, I just like any kind of allowance.
The study of happiness is a thriving field these days.
Entire scholarly journals are devoted to the subject as well as tons of books.
For his book, Gross National Happiness, Mr. Brooks decided to delve into the data.
He discovered mountains of large-scale reliable surveys that go back for decades.
According to the data, conservatives are nearly twice as likely as liberals to say they're happy, and this gap has persisted for at least a generation.
Who's mocking me?
Oh, you. Okay, fair enough.
Sorry, I mean, that's bad.
Don't mock my wife. That's my job.
What explains the happiness gap?
Two of the biggest factors are marriage and religion, which are powerfully correlated with happiness.
Two-thirds of conservatives are married, while only a third of liberals are.
Conservatives are also twice as likely to go to a house of worship once a week.
There's another factor, too, which he argues centers on worldview.
Conservatives generally believe that people who work hard can get ahead and be successful.
They believe success...
Is in their own control. Liberals are more inclined to believe in collective solutions to social problems and that people's success depends on factors outside their control.
I compared poor conservatives with rich liberals, he told me.
90% of poor conservatives say that hard work and perseverance can overcome disadvantage, but only 65% of rich liberals believe that.
So, blah-de-blah-de-blah.
For example, liberals in both countries, the US and Canada, believe income inequality is our biggest social problem.
But Mr. Brooks argues that when you look at what actually affects people's happiness, it's not.
What makes people miserable is the sense that they don't have equality of opportunity, he says, or take the matter of work.
You'd think, especially if you were a professor or a journalist, that sewer cleaners, cleaning ladies, and burger flippers would be unhappy with their jobs, but that's not the case.
The data say that 89% of all people who work more than 10 hours a week are very unhappy with their work, excluding internet philosophers who are lucky to work 10 hours a week.
Rarely work. More than 10 hours.
I mean, we can skip over that part.
The overwhelming majority of people who work like to work.
The main reason is that it gives them a sense of achievement.
Blah-de-blah-de-blah.
It turns out that your mother was right.
Ah! Wait, sorry, not my mother.
Happiness has very little to do with materialistic stuff at all.
It mostly comes, and I shudder to say these words, from family, faith, friends, and the dignity of work.
There is a truth that Mr.
Brooks thinks the urban elites ought to try to grasp.
The majority of people are very happy with these yucky traditional values.
They work very well.
Who then are the unhappiest of them all?
Look in the mirror, dear reader, for it may be you.
Researchers have found that lifetime happiness is shaped like a U. It has a big sag in the middle.
Statistically, the saddest year in a man's life is age 44, he tells me merrily.
By then, your spouse has figured out that you're a bore, you're not that fun, and you're not going to change.
you have adolescents in the house, and you've found that success and money aren't the same thing.
For men, all these chickens come home to roost in their mid to late 40s.
Women also have a middle-aged slump, but they tend to suffer somewhat less.
If you are 44, I have good news.
Soon you will be 50, and things will start looking up.
Happiness studies show that healthy people who are 70 are just as happy as people who are 20.
By the end of breakfast, Mr. Brooks had explained why almost everything I believed when I was 20 was entirely wrong.
Many of the things I thought would bring me happiness did not, and many of the things I despised, e.g. marriage, did.
So, what now?
Alas, I'm not religious.
Is there any other way to increase my happiness?
Yes, he tells me.
Be philanthropic.
I think, does that mean join an orchestra?
No.
People who volunteer or give money to charity are 43% more likely than non-givers to say they are very happy, I'm going to read that again. It's a very important statistic.
And again, it's just a statistic, who knows, right?
But let's say that it's important. People who volunteer or give money to charity are 43% more likely than non-givers to say they are very happy.
Conservatives are more charitable than liberals.
Which is another reason why they're happier.
And the more you give, the happier you get.
In other words, money really can buy happiness after all, but only if you give it away.
I just sort of wanted to mention that, because this is not to get you to donate.
This is because, you know, it's the beginning of the month, so I'll lay off you all for a bit.
But it's just so that you understand.
I'm actually trying to encourage happiness through this kind of stuff.
There's a perception, I guess, that's floating around.
Maybe people who don't know my history.
Question? Comment? Moral of the story, give up all your worldly possessions to Steph.
Well, that's true. I will actually take other worldly possessions as well.
Demonic possession, for instance.
Pretty cool. But there's something that's interesting, and maybe it's from people who don't know as much about the history of FDR, but...
I mean, as you all know, I had a real job with a really fine income, which I sort of gave away three quarters of to start FDR. And so, you know, it's funny because people sort of say, well, Steph asks for money, and therefore he's net positive from FDR. But of course, FDR is a huge charity for me, as it is to other people.
And I would say, given the income disparity that I accepted, nobody's given more money to FDR than I have for me.
If that makes any sense.
And this doesn't mean that I'm sacrificing and so on.
It's just a reality that by giving away three quarters of my income, I gained an enormous amount of happiness.
And it's nice to see some of those statistics sort of out there.
And the people who donate say...
That is the same kind of thing because, of course, money won't buy you happiness.
It's a means to an end. But charity, volunteering – and it doesn't have to be money.
I mean it doesn't have to be FDR. Whatever you give to extravagantly, whether it's some other charity or you go and become a candy striper at your local hospital or you go and read books for the blind or whatever it is that you do – It just makes you happy.
And volunteerism, charity and so on, the generosity of spirit, all the stuff that makes Ayn Rand creakily arise from her smoky grave and come and attempt to strangle us with accusations of altruism, those things make you happy.
I'm not even going to try and put out a theory now as to why, but I hope that that sort of makes some sense.
I do find it very interesting, and I think that it's true, at least it's true in my experience, that the religious people are happier than the non-religious people.
I think that's true.
I think in my experience, people who have some sort of faith in something bigger or higher or larger than themselves tend to be sort of happier than petty, annoying, materialistic, left-wing, socialist materialists.
They're just... Materialists are annoying.
They tend to be kind of stingy.
They tend to be pretty deterministic.
They tend to be pretty dour, as this sort of study tends to indicate.
And again, take it all with a grain of salt.
The fact that it happens to mesh with my experience makes it completely true.
All it means is that it meshes with my experience.
And the reason for that, I mean, I would say, is that...
Illusion is still better than nihilism, right?
I mean, there's something so fundamentally nihilistic about that petty, annoying, socialistic, left-wing materialism, and at least there's some stuff, and I've got a sort of podcast and video in the works about this.
It's on deck for the next week or two which is a list of everything that religion gets right and we've talked about some of this before so I'll just touch on it briefly here but we all know from the Miko system that we can ask questions of ourselves and get answers that are unexpected and incredibly wise and religion gets that right and religion links you into something that is larger than yourself which of course is in fact your deep and true self metaphorically projected into the sky but the petty Lefty materialists don't even get anything like that,
and they live this very sort of shallow, surface, annoying life.
And so to me it would make sense that people who have a faith in a kind of God end up being happier than those annoying communist materialists who just seem to walk around with their jaws clenched almost as tight as their asses and seem to be very negative when it comes to...
You know, pulling down values of any kind and also tend to be depressingly...
The locus of control for a human being is not within themselves.
At least the religious people believe that you have a soul and you can choose, but a lot of the materialists go towards this economics as determinism, determinism as determinism and so on, which strips a lot of the joy, beauty and wonder out of human life that at least religion to some degree retains.
Now... Obviously, as a strong atheist, religion is a lie, but it's a nicer lie than the lie of lefty materialism, and I think that's one of the reasons why these people are happier.
I think, of course, that what we're trying to do is to capture some of the depth and power that is projected into religious fantasy and reclaim it.
I mean, that's certainly been my goal, to take the glories and some of the beauties of religion and some of the efficiencies of religion, which is you pray and you get responses back, which is really the purpose and course of the Miko system conversations.
To reclaim that glory and beauty and take it out of illusion and put it back into a rational philosophy, I think, has certainly been one of my goals, and it's nice to see that there does seem to be some And validation of this in general.
And the last thing that I'll say is that the podcasts where I unabashedly rocket myself into the stratosphere of history and the big picture of what it is that we're doing, the grandeur of this philosophical conversation and so on,
The podcasts where I just let myself, let all restraints go free, cast all modesty to the wind and talk about the glory and the power and the beauty of what it is that we're doing, the unprecedented nature of this conversation, that tends to be or those tend to be the podcasts which most add the rocket fuel to people's jetpacks of joy.
And when we take ourselves out of the pettiness of our daily life and we plug ourselves into the broad sweep of history and the grand scheme and the grand journey and the grand destination of human thought, then we plug ourselves into something much larger than we are and that elevates and it inspires and it expands us and it makes us deeper and it makes us more brilliant and it makes us more powerful and it makes us happier.
Because we overcome the pettiness of the everyday and plug ourselves into the grand electric arc of human thought, and that is a wonderful, wonderful thing.
And that's something that religious people get much more easily than secular lefties do.
So that to me would also make sense.
I think that we can get a lot more joy than the religious people, of course, because grandeur plus truth is better than grandeur plus truth.
I would say that this article is very interesting.
It certainly conforms to a lot of my experience that giving up money for the sake of truth and virtue and that which really means something in this world is a beautiful and wonderful and inspiring and exciting thing.
And that just being sort of deterministic and materialistic means a net loss in joy.
And that certainly has been my experience as well.
So I just sort of wanted to put that out there.
It's an interesting article. I'll post the link to it if I can find it on the board.
But it's in the Globe and Mail for Saturday, May 31st, 2008.
Globeandmail.com, I think, is the website.
So... I just wanted to mention that up front, and now you've had enough time to come up with questions, comments, issues, problems, and so on.
So I hope that you will ask them.
Hi, Steph. Carl here.
Hi, how are you doing? I'm good.
How about you? Good, thank you.
Yeah, the religious grandeur and glory and all that, one can certainly get that.
I mean, I get a lot of that through music.
And at the same time, you can get a sense of what's bigger than yourself.
And also, you know, access to real emotions.
You know, hopefully.
Some musicians don't get that, but I really enjoy the ones who do.
So, both of those things, I really enjoy getting through music, you know.
And I'm sorry, I just want to explain that for people who are listening later or who don't know Carl's history.
Carl is actually a plumber, but what he's referring to is the musical podcast at FDR. And that's really the only music that he knows and is referring to, just so people can understand that.
In a larger context.
And certainly, I have found, based on the feedback, that the musical podcasts at FDR certainly do seem to stimulate some genuine emotion, mostly rage and disgust.
So I just wanted to sort of back that up, but please go on.
Yes. The Podcast 500, I think, has got to be the most moving podcast.
Well, certainly. And I think that it has, again, according to a number of reports that I've gotten from the field, it's not only moving to you, but it's also spontaneously caused bowel movements in other people, sometimes in public, once on a bus and once in an elevator.
So it certainly has the power of movement for sure.
Movements and tears.
Oh, there are tears.
There are, in fact, tears.
So, and I think you mentioned orchestra in there, but I've been playing in orchestras for most of my musical career, and I'm finally, as some people know already, taking a large break this summer, three or four months off of orchestra playing.
In fact, any work at all.
So, I'm just going to be...
Just trying to clean out all of that dysfunction that gets thrown around between the conductor and players and between the different players.
The best I can come up with is indifference when I'm playing in orchestras.
Except every once in a while there is that grandeur.
When you're part of something larger, that's when it's working.
When you have a good conductor, a good piece, and a great place to perform, then it can be just incredible.
You are part of something larger than yourself, and you just kind of sit back and enjoy that while you're doing it, actually.
But that doesn't happen often enough to make it worth it.
Right, and as far as I understand it as well, you'll be working on Free Domain Radio, the musical, for most of the summer, right?
Oh, absolutely, yeah. Did you get my audition tape where I can do the entire chorus line with myself and three hand mirrors?
Well, I just figured that Greg M will, Greg Benton will write the music and you'll write the lyrics and I'll just take the credit.
Excellent, excellent. Well, that sounds like a good FDR project.
I'm going to be basically just relaxing this summer, but I'm definitely very devoted to FDRs.
I hope that whatever I'm doing is going to be good for the community.
I might be traveling around visiting some people or whatever.
Excellent. And you can say, I got into this philosophy side, and now I'm unemployed, which you also like.
That's my experience as well, so perhaps we could take the touring band, right?
Yeah, practical philosophy, actually.
Practical wisdom. Exactly.
Oh, that reminds me, the book Practical Anarchy is coming along very nicely.
I just wanted everyone to know.
It's not going to be a small tome, I can guarantee you that.
I'm already at about 30,000 words, which is longer than everyday anarchy.
But at least I have covered the first topic, which is an introduction of me!
But anyway, I just wanted to mention that.
Sorry, go ahead. No, I think I'm pretty much done unless you have any other questions about that.
What are your plans for the summer?
Well, basically, I decide I'm just really going to just start out, unplug the phones.
Not Skype, though. But unplug the cell phone and the main phone and just wake up in the morning and say, you know, what do I want?
Or what do I want to do?
And, of course, that ends up also being, of course, who do I want?
So working on the relationships in my life and making sure that, you know, they're either good or gone.
So what you're basically saying is you're going to spend the summer trawling for man candy?
Is that right? Oh, Steph.
I understand. But, yeah, well, you know, you got me there.
But, now, where was I? Boy, now I'm totally distracted.
Why, did you see some man candy?
Do you want to call me back in a few minutes?
No, just in my mind's eye, that's all I can see now, is just all this man candy.
Steph holding a pair of tires, slowly turning.
Sorry, go on. That should cure whatever image you have.
I was picturing you wearing a thong, actually.
Wow, I'm dressing up at the moment.
It's funny, because when I first posted at FDR, it was about a year ago.
In fact, I started really getting this sense of freedom just right around my first anniversary of posting on the board.
Inspired, I think, a few days after Greg M's defu as well.
And I... Let's see.
So I remember, like, I wrote my first post a year ago in May, and I was previewing it or something, and then I lost it because I was previewing it, trying to be perfect, making sure it looked okay and blah, blah, blah.
And then I was just incredibly angry because I thought it was a good post, and I was, like, upset, and I yelled in the mirror, what do you want?
You know, like, you idiot.
But actually, that was exactly the question I needed to start asking myself because I so often am doing what other people want and trying to make them feel good and You know, being concerned about their anxiety and all that kind of stuff.
So I've really been working on that, especially the last six months, but, you know, in that last year.
So I feel like I'm now at a point where I just kind of, I've come to a point where I can just, I can just pretty much do what I want, at least for three or four months, and we'll see what happens.
I think that's wonderful.
And I also think that, I mean, I've always got the sense from you, Carl, that you're a person who's capable of great affection and devotion.
So I would definitely go into, you know, if the relationship thing opens up for you at all, I would definitely go in with an extraordinary amount of confidence in the values, gifts and treasures that you'll be able to bring to somebody else.
Oh, thank you. Thank you.
Christina's nodding and saying, can you teach some of that to Steph?
I'm not sure what that means. Well, the hands-on approach, perhaps.
Right. Well, now that I don't have a steady income, I'm just man candy anyway, so I have to go to the gym so much.
Exactly right. I cannot bring the money, but I can bring the abs.
Sorry? As long as the abs are absolute.
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
Okay. I think that's just about all I have.
The closest I come to laundry is this washboard right here.
Sorry. Is there anything else you wanted to talk about or should we cut this short before it goes completely downhill?
Oh yeah, I could get problematic.
No, that's great though. Thank you very much.
All right. Well, thank you. I appreciate it.
And if anybody else has a comment or a question who's not currently fainted, that would be great.
Hello? Hello?
Hi. Hi.
Hi. I had a question for Christina, if that's okay.
Okay. Go ahead.
Yeah, let's just wait.
Hang on one sec.
Hello.
Hi, hi.
Hi. I'm after some expert opinion.
Not that Steph isn't an expert, I'm sure, but particularly in the psychotherapy area.
Basically, I'm looking to begin a four-year MA course in psychotherapy.
Yeah, I know. It's a serious business.
I have an open day to go and look around and see what the different aspects of the course are, and I'm wondering if you could tell me a few things about, because I've done some research obviously in the different courses that they offer, but if you could provide any extra information or some questions that you think I should ask, or just basically talk me through, give me any help that you could, that would be very much appreciated.
What area of psychology are you interested in?
Well, again, I'm not incredibly technical, so that's part of what I'm after is kind of demystifying the terms.
Because they've got three courses.
One is gestalt psychotherapy, one is humanistic, person-centered, and one is integrative psychotherapy.
So if you could sort of...
Perhaps give me a layman's explanation of those.
That would be appreciated very much.
I don't practice any of those types of psychotherapy.
The humanistic and the gestalt, those were founded...
Probably around the 50s or the 60s or maybe even a little earlier.
And I do think that every therapy or every movement in therapy has brought something forward to psychology.
A lot of therapists...
It's interesting because I attended a workshop a couple of years ago and it was called What Works in Psychotherapy?
And the authors of the book who were also running the workshop...
You know, did lots and lots of studies and examined very many different kinds of psychotherapy.
And they also looked at outcome studies for the different types of therapy.
And they talked to different therapists in different fields.
And essentially, everybody says, oh, I practice this kind of therapy, whether it's gestalt or humanistic or cognitive behavioral or interpersonal or psychodynamic or what have you.
And then when they get behind closed doors, they do a little bit of everything.
So very few people are actually very true to their training.
Like I said, I don't know.
I did a component on gestalt therapy and a component on humanistic therapy.
I didn't do anything on integrative psychotherapy, so I don't even know.
I can't even speak to that at all.
But they're not my areas of interest, and I wouldn't be the best person to answer any questions on those two specific types of, or three specific types of therapy.
Okay, fair enough. I mean, if you were to do an MA, you know, a four-year course, I mean, what sort of things would you need to know from them you know I mean I've got questions of sort of what percentage of people complete the course you know when do they go after that course you know is there a more direct route into becoming a therapist you know at what percentage of people convert and go straight into practicing therapy from course and things like that I mean do you have can you think of anything I might have I assume that you have an undergraduate degree.
Yes, yes. Is it in psychology?
No, it's not. It's in economics.
Okay, so you're starting from, yeah.
I'm starting somewhat from scratch.
Well, that's, you know, I mean, I did have a woman in my program who had an undergraduate degree in English, and she ended up at, you know, at the end of our program winning the Distinguished Students Award for, you know, for her work in psychology.
So, it really, you know, it doesn't really matter.
Yeah, I think I've got the abilities, so I'm not particularly worried on that score.
But yeah, I mean, it is somewhat of a switch, as you might say.
Right, right, right.
I think basically, I mean, you're going to need some courses with some theory and some background, of course, in developmental psychology.
You probably want to get some courses in personality and human development, that kind of thing.
And, you know, I mean, I guess when you're here, I assume that you're doing this in the U.K., Yeah, here, in order to get into a graduate program in psychology, if you don't have any undergraduate training in psychology, you have to take some extra courses that will give you the basics so that you can get some of the fundamental principles underlining psychological theories.
And then the programs...
Sorry, there's applied and then there's research.
So it depends on what you want to do.
I mean, a program in clinical psychology will teach you.
Like I said, here we had different components and we do internships.
I assume that there will be internships and that kind of thing with you guys as well.
It's been so long since I've been part of academia.
Yeah. Well, yes.
One of the issues that I possibly had was that it's a part-time course.
So whether that will be...
Oh, did I disconnection?
No. Sorry?
No? Did I? So sorry.
Hello there. Sorry about that.
I lost the connection. The last thing I heard you say was that it's a part-time course you're taking.
Yes, yes, yes. It's a part-time course.
And adding it up, it's something along the lines of 30 to 40 total days of teaching.
One thing that slightly concerns me is whether it's a proper course or not.
So it's about 40 days a year of presumably face time with trained therapists.
It says that it's an accredited course.
Right. I was just going to mention that.
If you want to become licensed again here in North America, you need to attend a university that is accredited by the American or the Canadian Psychological Association so that you can then pursue your registration.
And I would assume that in England or the UK that you would want to pursue your career in an accredited university.
Well, whether this is a good or bad issue, there is no governmental accreditation, but it's an accredited member of something called the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy.
So there's no kind of...
Right, right, right.
Now, I mean, I don't know.
I mean, here we have bodies that regulate psychological practice, and I'm not governed by, there's no governmental practice.
There's no authority here, but it's the College of Psychologists of Ontario that will issue the license and they will require the applicants to have their education from an accredited university.
So if you want to get registered with a psychology organization, you would look into the university's accreditation with the Psychological Association in your district.
Yes, yeah, and I think that's what this is.
But basically, yeah, I mean, obviously I'm going to find out more on the open day, but I don't want to get taken by a fly-by-night situation.
Right, right, right.
One thing that concerned me, again, I looked at the people that they have trained in the past, and I think one of them had a practice that said that they practiced hypnotherapy.
Which concerns me slightly, because I'm not sure whether that is as...
What's the word?
I don't know whether that is works or not.
There is a growing literature and treatment with hypnotherapy.
It is a type of psychotherapy or a type of therapy or a type of treatment module.
Some people are strictly hypnotherapists.
Some people do some hypnotherapy along with the...
Like I said, everybody does sort of eclectic kinds of work.
So some people might do some hypnotherapy along with their other types of therapy.
I worked with...
of the hospitals that I was at and he was, he did hypnotherapy.
He did it for a period of time in his career and then he moved on to different things as he found different interests.
So, you know, it worked.
He had some success with it and then he moved on to other areas.
Well, yeah, well, thank you.
Thank you for your help, anyway. You're very welcome.
Good luck. Thank you very much.
I'll let someone else have a go.
Thank you.
Bye. I also just wanted to mention to those who become interested in therapy through Free Domain Radio or through the Ask a Therapist series that the amount of voluntary tax, which is in fact involuntary, that Free Domain Radio charges on a per hourly basis for your clients is very reasonable.
So we'll just get you a letter out about that.
I'll wear a t-shirt as I practice.
There we go! Perfect!
And really, that's all you should wear to get the right message across.
Well, thanks. And do keep us posted.
Best of luck with it, for sure.
I mean, a key thing, of course, is can you bill insurance companies, right?
If you come out and you're credited to the point where you can legitimately bill insurance companies, that's a big differentiator.
It's the NHS over here.
It's all socialized medicine.
Well, that's true, but that doesn't mean that everyone can set themselves up and build the NHS, though, right?
I mean, I can't sort of say, hey, I'm a therapist, because I put the word therapist on my business card, and therefore I can build the NHS. So I just make sure that you can get into that system for sure.
Right. And, well, yeah.
Will that... No, I suppose.
Sorry. I'm thinking to myself of the hypocrisy issues involved.
Oh, don't sweat that. I mean, if you can do stuff to help people live a more rational and healthy life and be better parents, you know, who cares?
I mean, can't control that.
Can't be a therapist without it.
So I wouldn't care. I wouldn't worry about that myself.
Right, right, right. That's the point, after all, isn't it?
You know, I mean, they take your money.
I don't know that they should take your profession and your peace of mind as well.
Right, of course. Of course.
Okay. Well, thank you.
Thank you both of you. You're very welcome.
I keep us posted. And now we do have another space on deck for anybody else who has a comment or a question or issue or problem or just mad praise for my haircut.
It's completely up to you.
Alrighty, I got a question.
Can I be heard? Sure.
Sure. Alright, private property.
I just got done reading a book called What is Property?
by Pierre Joseph Produn.
For people, I guess everybody knows who he is.
Nobody doesn't know who he is.
He was a 19th century anarchist.
He wrote this book and he created this dichotomy of property.
Hello? Hi. Oh, okay.
I thought I cut off there.
Uh, but...
He said that there's two kinds of property.
There's proprietorship and there's possessions.
And what he meant by proprietorship was, I guess, state property.
And what he meant by possessions was pretty much what a market anarchist would interpret as property, kind of the fruits of your labor.
But he also kind of threw in there that You don't have any right to charge usury or rent or inheritance or anything like that on your personal possessions.
Likewise, he tried to distinguish what can be a possession and what can't be a possession.
Anything that they would classify as a means of production.
Could not be a personal possession.
So I'm thinking like, okay, what if I have a truck that's mine?
Could somebody technically come and take my truck if they claim it as a means of production?
I mean, do I have a right? Well, I'm sorry.
I know this is the property is theft guy, but I mean, just saying stuff doesn't prove it, right?
So, for instance, why is it wrong to charge usury?
What's his argument for that?
His argument is that what happens is somebody else is making use of the property.
To him, whoever else is laboring with that property is giving it value.
And you're just kind of siphoning off the value that the other person is putting on it.
It's a really strange argument.
I'm just... Well, sorry, it's not that strange.
It's the Marxist argument, which is that the creator of the factory and the person who has deferred his spending in order to accumulate the capital to invest in the fixed equipment in the factory, that the capitalist is not adding anything to the equation by providing the worker with a factory, but is instead, by paying the worker less than what the worker is producing, is parasitical.
There's a standard Marxist argument, and Produn is certainly in that category.
Right, though I wouldn't...
Reading Produne, I wouldn't really classify him as...
That hardcore of a Marxist?
Because he also made some arguments that are not exactly Marxist.
I mean, this guy...
The book seems like a whole contradiction to me.
I mean, he says one thing and then he says the other.
I guess I'm asking, like, what is...
I know the economic arguments, the efficiency arguments, to take that down.
But what is the... I guess the good argument for morality on that, especially the possessions thing and why we can't charge the usury or rent out our stuff.
Yeah, I mean, the usury argument, I mean, there's two approaches that I would take, and usury is something – this just means lending out money and charging interest primarily, although it can mean goods, but mostly it means capital.
Usury was banned throughout the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages because there was a Catholic ban on usury.
It was considered to be theft because – well, for a variety of reasons, but primarily because – The economy was stagnant and so people...
Oh, it went all kinds of quiet there.
Hello? I'm still here.
Okay, good. I'm here.
So that what happened to the economy was stagnant.
So if I lend you 10 doubloons and then a year from now I expect you to pay 11 back, because of the zero-sum game concept of the economy that was common in the Middle Ages and the Catholic ban, and the Muslims have this ban as well even now on lending to Muslims,
it was considered to be theft that if I give you 10 doubloons, Dubloons now, and I ask for 11 back in a year that I'm stealing a dubloon from you, and so it was banned in the Christian community until the post-Reformation era, and this is,
of course, one of the reasons why Jews became so prominent in the world of finance, because Jews don't have the ban on usury, and therefore they became the moneylenders, and also Jews were barred from holding land or property other than their dwelling and place of business, so again, they were also...
The ban on usury is long, old and venerable in terms of Western traditions and people view usury with suspicion or lending for interest.
And of course it arises from a lack of understanding of the time value of money.
The reason that I will borrow money to buy a house and pay interest back is that I get the value of living in the house and that's what I'm paying for.
Like if it takes me 20 years.
Right. Yeah, it's the time preference.
And if you don't understand the time preference in terms of value, then it looks like a ripoff.
There's this thing, too, where people who have insurance policies who are struck with a terminal illness, that there are these groups who will buy out their insurance policy for 50 cents on the dollar before they die.
And these are considered to be predatory and it's stealing and of course it's not.
It's just that the ultimate time value for money is I'd sure like to have some before I'm dead rather than afterwards when it's just going to molder with me in the grave.
Right. Says who, right?
I mean, who's going to stop me?
Are you going to create a government that's going to make it illegal?
I mean, how is he supposed to say we should have no government?
evil banned things that we can, the moment you have universal evil banned things, especially that don't require the initiation of the use of force, which voluntary contract, which is what usury really is, as soon as you have an anarchist saying, these voluntary contracts are wrong, immoral, and should be illegal, then, of course, he's no longer these voluntary contracts are wrong, immoral, and should be illegal, then, of course, Right.
Well, I mean, what he was saying is, when he was talking about capitalism, I mean, he was talking about the mercantilist version of it, as a lot of them do, you know, because the term has been kind of bastardized.
It's capitalism itself over the years.
And what he's saying is that, well, this only exists because people have property and property is the death because it's granted by the state.
Which means he's saying state property is theft, which I agree with.
His whole argument is that, and I understand the time preference thing.
I mean, I look at it as if you want to buy a house and you have to save for it, by definition it becomes a future good.
And what the capitalist or the lender does is brings that future good into your present.
And he charges a fee for that.
And it's cost him to do that, right?
The money that the bank has used to buy my house is money that it has lost and therefore I should pay recompense for that because otherwise, if I can't borrow money for a house at interest, then the bank will never buy a house because it will just go and invest it somewhere else where it can actually make money.
So there won't actually be a house, right?
So it's one of these things where there's no alternative to lending for money, lending for interest.
There's just no house. There's no transaction otherwise.
Right, and plus, you know, that's just one transaction.
I mean, there's an economy full of, you know, billions of people.
I mean, that literally runs the economy, you know?
It makes it move. Yeah, now, I mean, his distinction between public and private property...
There's no such thing as public property, because there's no such thing as the public.
There's only who has use and control of property, and there are some people who have a legitimate claim to property, and there are other people who just shoot you if you try to establish a claim to the property that they have unjustly acquired, and that, of course, would be the definition of public property.
And, of course, I'm sure that Proudhon and you and I and most other reasonable philosophers would agree that Yeah, for sure.
Well, see, the thing with Produn is, yes, he's with us.
He was totally against state property.
And again, I agree, state property is theft by definition.
Plus, state can't have property when you really think about it.
But what he does is he kind of replaces that, I guess, quote unquote, public domain of property with the community.
His whole argument is, well, if you have, and you've probably heard this a million times, if you have a bunch of Individual property owners, if all the property on earth is taken because land is limited, it's scarce, then if you're born into a situation where all the property is owned, then you're truly not free.
What I'm asking for is, I know all the arguments from efficiency on that, but I mean, I think you already gave it to me, but the philosophical, logical argument for morality, I think that's a better argument.
Well, and it's certainly not true to say that land is scarce.
I mean, the world is vastly underpopulated as far as the distribution of land goes.
I mean, the United States, like about 2% of the land mass of the United States is inhabited by human beings.
I mean, it's not all Manhattan.
In Canada, it's like, I don't know, a tenth of a percent.
It's like tiny. I mean, even with the massive amount of increased population that we've had over the last century or two...
We're in no danger of running out of land.
This population growth thing is not a problem, not an issue at all.
And so maybe in 5,000 years it might be an issue.
But if you put a standard density of your average American city, if I remember this rightly, and it's something like this, though I may not have got it perfect, but if you take your average human density of the average American city, you could take the entire world's population and put it in Texas.
So it's, you know, land is not particularly short.
We're not wall to wall in terms of being, having access to lands and resources.
And of course you are free if you're born into a situation where everything is owned because...
Your parents own your house, therefore you have some place to grow up in, and you can trade with whoever you want to expand your land ownership if you want.
People can build stuff on the moon, they can go to space stations, they can build new islands if they want.
I mean, I don't think that there's any particular issue to say, well, if everything's owned, then nobody's free, because that's a situation...
Sorry? Sorry, I was going to say, I think it's just a typical Marxist thought to where they believe in a free market that wealth only flows in one direction, and that's whoever produces, and certainly that's not the case.
But it's kind of that, I guess that in a way that comes from some elements of classical economists too.
Because they focus almost all on production.
When people tax you, that's wealth flowing in one direction.
Well, sorry. One other thing.
I mean, Proudhon and other of these kinds of thinkers, they came out of the late 17th, early 18th century fears of Malthusianism, right?
This idea that agricultural productivity only goes up in a linear fashion, but the growth of a human population goes up asymptotically, and therefore you will always end up with starvation and this and that and the other.
And what they're talking about where property is owned or land is owned, What they're actually talking about is, you know, viable and useful and productive arable land from a farming standpoint, right?
And that, I think, is a very different situation.
And, of course, the Malthusian doctrine turned out to be completely and utterly false, like all of this stuff that occurred in 18th and 19th centuries, particularly late, up until sort of the mid to late 19th century, late 18th for about a century.
Like after Adam Smith, the people just came up with a huge amount of bullshit for like 200 years.
That's sort of my particular opinion.
So you've got Malthusianism.
You could count America too, but Malthusianism, you've got Marxism, you've got a lot of the other 19th century philosophers.
They came up with just massive amounts of indigestible tripe.
And it's just something that happens.
When philosophy gets close to the truth, what happens is a huge bunch of reactionary forces come swarming out of the woodwork to cloud up the muck.
And we've certainly clouded up the clearing air, right?
We've certainly seen that quite a bit around what we do as well.
I'm sorry to interrupt. Yeah, no, that's perfectly correct because it's like there's a lot of things in the economy that's unseen, you know, that's kind of invisible.
And I mean, if you're the laborer and you just go clock in and do your job and earn your wages, I mean, you don't We don't really see what the capitalist does.
He and the demand in society is the reason you have your job.
It's all that invisible stuff that they don't see and I think that's what brings up all this, like you said, bullshit.
Well, but they do see it, right?
I mean, they do see it.
Even the workers who resent – everybody wants to get paid more.
Everybody thinks they're undervalued.
That's just a natural piece of – I mean, sure, Bill Gates feels that he should get 10 cents more a month.
I don't know. But everybody feels underpaid.
That's just natural. That's inevitable because we have a deeper sense of our own worth and value than other people do.
But, oh yeah, I mean, the workers, they completely understand the value that the capitalist is bringing to them.
The reason that we know that is because they're not sitting there saying, well, screw this, I'm going to make my own factory, right?
I mean, So, of course they understand the value that the capitalist is bringing to bear.
If they say, well, if I move my hand back and forth like this, if a capitalist inserts a machine into my grip, then I make a lot of money.
But if they say, well, it's the muscle movement that makes so much money, it's like, well, why don't they just stand by their bed in the morning and do that and see how much money they make, right?
Well, prior to webcams, not so much, right?
What I was talking about is, like, if somebody works in retail and they make, like, eight bucks an hour...
I mean, they see if the store is selling well, they see all these thousands of dollars coming in, right?
Through the cash registers and whatnot.
And they're getting paid $8 an hour.
And a lot of them think, you know, we're getting all this wealth coming in.
I mean, where's it all going?
Why are we only getting paid $8 an hour?
Well, yeah, what they do is they look across the floor, like if you're a waiter, and you're working in a restaurant that's making thousands of dollars a day, and you look at the other waiters and you say, well, without us, there'd be no restaurant, so we should make more money.
But that's, of course, a fallacy, because the question isn't...
Whether if there were no such thing as waiters, the question is how replaceable is your skill set?
That's really all it comes down to.
How much in demand is your skill set and how replaceable is it, right?
So there's only one Brad Pitt, which is why he can make $20 million of film or George Clooney or Tom Cruise.
I mean, their skill set is not replaceable and it's in high demand.
Or, if you look at the other end of the spectrum, my skill set is not replaceable, but my demand is not quite as high.
So, this is just a matter of understanding the economics of it.
The question isn't, well, sure, if there were no waiters, there'd be no restaurants, I guess, although I guess you could have drive-thrus, but the reality is that the waiters are eminently replaceable because anybody with legs, arms, and a basic grasp of English can be a waiter and get all of the considerable tax benefits.
So that's just something they don't know.
They say, well, if you take this cog out of the machine, the entire machine doesn't work, and therefore we should get more money.
But the question is, can you get another cog for two bucks, right?
And that's sort of the case. They tend to not look strongly on human capital, too.
And they totally reject the division of labor on top of that.
So, I mean...
But yeah, that's basically what I wanted to ask.
I just wanted to see what you thought about the whole pro-dune thing.
But I'm pretty much done.
Alright, well thank you. It's interesting and I was like doing a bit of the old economics.
So thanks and if anybody else has questions, issues, comments, problems, mad, rank, praise.
Okay, so 1078, Tension Part 2?
Uh-huh. Care to clarify a little bit what it was you were talking about there?
I'm not sure.
Like you...
You were basically saying that we're sort of waiting for...
We're supposed to wait around for something.
You have to be a bit more clear than that.
I know that I went into more detail than that, so you could be a little more clear about what you're asking.
I'm not sure if you were speaking specifically about...
Because you were referring to people who had gotten this far in the conversation, right?
So I wasn't clear whether the thing that we're all waiting for is something big that's supposed to happen for FDR alone, for individual people, or what?
Well, why don't we start with how you felt when you listened to the podcast?
Because you sound irritated to me, right?
That's just sort of my thought on it, but...
No, that's pretty fair, I guess.
More... I don't know, more frustrated than irritated, I guess, would probably be a better way to put it, because...
I remember you doing something like this back in the...
in the 900s as well, and...
every time it...
it just leaves me sort of...
like...
okay, well, what?
Right? Um...
Well, you realize that you're trying to irritate me too, right?
I mean, maybe you don't, right?
But I think that's not a criticism.
I'm just sort of pointing it out, right?
Because you're giving extraordinarily vague criticisms that can't be answered, right?
Okay, that's true.
That's true. So it's like, there's something weird about it.
We're supposed to wait for what?
I don't understand. Answer that.
I'm like, I don't know.
So your irritation is unprocessed and you're trying to make me – because I feel irritated and I think that's why and it doesn't mean that there's anything wrong.
That's just my experience, right?
Right. Like, if I've said something that's incorrect or inconsistent, then you can point it out and we can figure out why and so on.
But just saying, you know, this left me frustrated because it was so vague, I don't know what to do with that, if that makes sense.
Right, right, right. Well, yeah, that's sort of how I felt after 1078.
I didn't know what to do with it.
Well, you said, he said, wait for it.
You've been in it for two years.
It's going to come.
And I was a little bit confused, too, with what it is.
Yeah, it's right around the corner.
There's, you know, the vibrations in the water and on the glass of your, you know, the glass of water on your dashboard and all of that.
And it's like... Oh, okay.
Okay, what? Alright, well, what did you think that the central issue that I was addressing with Tensions Part 1 and 2, what did you think that the tension in the community, how was I categorizing that?
What was the source of that, in my opinion?
The source of the tension?
Yeah. In your opinion.
Right, because if that's not clear to you, then what's coming in terms of the breakthrough won't make much sense, right?
And anybody who's listened to it, feel free to join in, and I'm sure it's a useful thing to talk about, but what was the source of the tension that I identified in my endless rambling, long-winded kind of way?
I can't recall.
Well, yeah, because then if you don't know what the illness is, then the sort of diagnosis and cure won't make any sense, right?
Right. That's fair.
And that doesn't mean that, I mean, that just means that maybe I was completely confusing, but does anybody who's heard it, anybody want to take a random stab?
Anyone? Class?
Yeah. Well, as far as I recall, the issue that I was talking about was that people were feeling tense because it was so easy to communicate FDR stuff that it was bringing their relationships into a kind of scary focus, if that makes sense. Because it's so easy.
There's this Everyday Anarchy book, which is short, it's free, it's accessible, and all of the other books that are now out for free that you can send any FDR materials to anyone and you don't have to wait for them to plow through podcasts, crambling and so on.
The people are getting kind of tense because it's so easy to disseminate philosophy that the barriers to spreading it are so much lower that people are getting kind of tense about it.
Tense, because the barriers are lower because of their own personal relationships.
Well, yeah. I mean, the excuses to talk to people about philosophy or about anarchism or about whatever, right?
The excuses are kind of lower.
Like, we have a proof for anarchy, right?
Which I think is pretty good.
And, you know, there's a video on it that I think is like 19 minutes long.
This is not a hugely demanding thing to ask someone to say, look at this free video where somebody steps through the proof for anarchy, which seems pretty airtight to me, right?
Or listen to this two-hour free book that's entertainingly read and is good audio quality or you can get a free PDF and print it out if you want.
This book, which talks about – opens up at least the possibility that we have an ambivalent relationship with anarchy because we treasure it so much in our personal life and fear it so much politically.
Isn't that a good place to begin a discussion?
So the fact that there's end-user, consumable, self-contained arguments that are very powerful that are available for the first time for free from FDR is making people kind of tense, I think, right?
Yeah, that's a good point.
And that explains my confusion, why I didn't quite remember what you thought the source was.
Because it has no relevance to me.
Righty. It's not that it has no relevance to you.
Well, I mean, in the sense that I don't really have any...
Personal relationships to be concerned about handing this stuff out to you.
Oh, Greg. Oh, Greg.
Oh, Greg.
I can think of where the irritation comes from.
I could give you my copy.
It's totally not true what you're saying, right?
I mean, I understand that you believe that it's true, but it's totally not.
Well, what do you mean?
Oh, Greg's gonna start with the dating soon, the dating soon, the dating soon.
He's gonna meet some girls and have to explain why he's insane.
Hi, I'd like to introduce this anarchist to my mother-in-law.
I hadn't thought of that.
That's a good point. Greg's going to go for a job real soon, a job real soon, a job real soon.
They're going to ask him what he does.
does, he says he makes some bombs.
I suppose.
I suppose.
Well, that's very generous of you, Greg.
Okay, I'll keep that as you call it.
Well, I don't see why I would even bother bringing this up with an employer.
Don't you know that people Google you?
If they Google me, I'll explain it.
I faced this like two years ago, right?
I faced this like two years ago, right?
Yeah, sure, but the kind of jobs that I'm going to be applying for, they're not going to Google me.
Oh, Greg has got a crystal ball, a crystal ball, a crystal ball.
Greg's got a crystal ball, he's going to sit and break it.
Okay. And even if we throw out the job thing, which I don't think that we can guaranteedly do, because they're going to ask you, what have you been doing for the past?
I mean, a job interview is going to say, what have you been up to since your resume ended in a black, smoky void of anarchism a year ago?
And I'm going to say I've been enjoying myself.
Right. And what have you been enjoying yourself with?
Oh, lots of things.
Thank you for trying.
But clearly he's been a drug mule, and I'm not sure that we want to hire him.
Right. Right, right, right.
Sure. And there's still the dating thing, right?
At some point, you're going to have to say, although I don't have a beard, big bushy eyebrows like Arkansas ditch rats, and I'm not throwing any bombs, I am in fact an A. Right.
Right, no, that's fair.
And, I mean, that I'm already kind of getting prepared for.
So, you're an intelligent fellow, right?
I think that we've established that.
So, why wouldn't you notice that?
I don't have any personal relationships or anyone to talk about anarchism with.
Hey, I wonder if that girl wrote back to me from my internet site.
And the girl that you're interested in or who's interested in you or mutually interested in each other's aspects, this girl has got a nice family and – so it's more than just anarchism, right? this girl has got a nice family and – so Right. Wait, what?
Well, she says that she's come from a nice family and her parents are really good and we have no reason to disbelieve her up front.
It's more than just the A word, right?
But I'm not sure the connection you're trying to make.
Well, I mean, we have some pretty specific theories about families, right?
Right. Which is that prior to a philosophical revolution that we're trying to carve here, it's pretty tough for families to be ethical and consistent, right?
Yeah. Yeah, that's true.
So I think that you say, well, I'm not going to have to live this double world because I don't have to live this double life because I have no other life, right?
But it's not true, right?
Well, it's on the verge of being not true.
Yeah. Oh, well, if it's on the verge, then nobody ever worries about that, right?
I mean, if somebody's pushing you towards a cliff, you don't sweat it until you drop, right?
That's the whole point. So, yeah, I think you're right.
Nope, good point. Good point.
Definitely a good point. Sorry, just thinking what you could do though, which might make it a little bit easier, is get a set of underwear with a picture of Paul Proudhon on the front.
And she'll say, who's that?
Funny you should ask. My penis is an anarchist.
That would be the way that you would approach it that could be helpful.
And then, of course, you could get a huge fake mustache and put it on your penis.
Something like that. So a conversation piece that could lead you into it more gently, so to speak.
Right, right, right.
Yeah, that would work.
Sure. But that doesn't really answer the question of...
Whatever this thing is that we're supposed to be waiting for.
Well, I think that it does, but...
But maybe it doesn't.
Really? Well, the thing that we're waiting...
I mean, if the tension comes from a fear of talking about philosophy with other people, which is still very strong in the board, right?
In the community as a whole.
That's true. I mean, I am everybody's secret slut mistress from hell, right?
Right. And philosophy, not me, but philosophy is the guilty secret, right?
So if philosophy is the guilty secret that we're ashamed of and we view as a kind of rotting sore in the nether regions that we have to cover up, that is strangely fun, then what is the breakthrough, right?
What is the next thing? Um...
That would be to not cover it up, right?
Well, that would be the action, but what would be the psychological breakthrough?
Well, not to desire to cover it up.
Right. So instead of hiding under bushes when the stampede of the general cultural livestock Comes thundering past, right?
Instead of dodging out of the way and hoping not to get trampled, what happens is we mount up on the seed of philosophy and we round those cattle up and we herd them where we want them to go, right?
Um, no?
Yeah. Where we take leadership positions with those around us with credibility and certainty and authority, that's the breakthrough.
I'm not going to hide anymore.
Damn it, this is what I'm proud of.
This is what I'm excited about.
This is what I'm thrilled about.
And your hostility and fear, I can certainly accept and I can understand, but I'm not going to let it stop me.
In fact, I'm only going to have it help me spur on.
Spur me on, right? Right, right, right.
Spur yourself on, right.
Absolutely. But whether people follow behind you like sheep or cattle is...
I mean, that's...
That's kind of...
That's sort of...
It's antithetical to what we're trying to achieve, right?
I mean, people shouldn't be sheep or cattle.
They should be independent. But they're not, right?
But they're not, and there's a social vacuum because historical answers, you know, patriotism, the state, to some degree the family, and in particular the religion and so on, that all of these things have just kind of fallen away, and we live in a void of belief, and there's quite a lot of nihilism around.
Right. The most confident and certain person in that environment is going to be the one who wins.
Because people can't think for themselves.
They can only respond to the emotional and psychological cues of those around them.
And if we hide philosophy like a guilty secret, like aristocratic porn, then it's going to be viewed as a dirty secret, right?
Whereas if we are proud and we do ride it like a white charger, then it's going to be viewed as something that is noble and wonderful.
People will only see...
What we love as we see it.
And if we look at it through their eyes with skepticism and horror and fear and indifference and it's crazy and it's, you know, whatever, right?
Then that's how they're going to see it, right?
But if we match perspectives with them with certainty and confidence, theirs will crumble for sure.
Right. That makes sense.
And that doesn't mean that everyone's then going to immediately become a philosopher.
But it's going to bring the...
The tension is not within us, right?
As I say in the podcast, the tension is in society between lies and the truth.
The tension is in society.
Like, as we said, when people go to talk with their foos, they feel terrified, but not because the fear is within them.
The fear is in their parents.
The fear is in the family unit, the family structure, right?
And people will see philosophy As we see it when we're with them.
Ah, when we're alone and we say, this is the wonderful best thing, ooh, new Socratic, blah, blah, blah, right?
Great forum. Then that's wonderful, so we're preaching to the choir, right?
But when we go out into the world, if we say, oh, philosophy is the most absolutely essential, important, extreme, exciting, wild, challenging thing that I've ever experienced, and if we don't downgrade what it is that we love in the world as a whole, in the world at large...
Then they will believe what we believe because they don't think for themselves.
We hope that they can over time when they learn.
But right now, they can't judge philosophy.
They can only judge how we judge philosophy.
Right. Right. That makes sense.
That makes sense. Sure.
So for me, it's like, well, I didn't ask to be enlisted in this goddamn army, but now that I'm in, I'm going to fight to the death.
Well, is that really reasonable though?
I mean, in one sense, you sort of did ask, right?
Me? God, no.
I didn't ask. I mean, for myself.
I mean, it doesn't mean I don't love it, but I sure as hell didn't sit there and say, hey, you know, it'd be really great if I just get completely – I feel completely fall head over heels in love with philosophy and it causes me all of these stress and changes and can't have a real job.
And the crazy talk thing where I just think, hey, you know, it'd be great if I stayed awake for 18 months pretty much and – And ended up feeling like I was going to go insane and ended up coming up with the most beautiful sanity that could be imagined.
I mean, that's just like, I didn't sit there and pray for that or want that when I was younger.
I'm very glad that it happened, but I was just writing about this in the book.
For me, it wasn't like I didn't leap onto the shore with the courage of a fish wanting to evolve.
It was just like philosophy.
I just bit down on a worm and the hook yanked me out of the water.
Sort of like that. Yeah.
Given that that's what it is, if I'm enlisted into this army, if I got drafted into this to a large degree when I was younger and more recently against my will, okay, well, if I'm drafted, I'm sure as hell not going to put down my weapon.
Right, right, right.
Okay. And from a cost-benefit standpoint, if you don't get the beauty and joy of philosophy, which very few of us get, if any, before we are quite a ways down the road, from a cost-benefit standpoint, it's just mental.
I mean, nobody would choose this.
Right, right.
That's for sure.
But then that's, I mean...
But we show the joy, right?
Because if people can't see the joy, then they won't understand...
Why we do it, right? Right, right, right, right.
So if we only show the fear and the alienation and the differences and the problems and the tension, then people are like, well, that's just masochistic, isn't it, right?
It's alienating, it's frustrating, it's confusing to people, there's long, awkward silences at the dinner party, it's hard to get a date with anybody who thinks you're sane, and the people who love you for being an anarchist and who don't understand it are even worse.
But if they don't see the joy...
Right? Then there's no ocean across the desert that people can get to.
It just looks like a desert that goes on and on, right?
Right, but I mean, I think it would be even worse to put on a false front of joy if you don't actually have that.
You mean, but you have the joy.
In fact, it was not more than two weeks ago that you had the joy through, right?
Oh, sure, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, I'm with you there.
False fronts, right? No, I'm with you there, for sure.
But... But...
No, I'm not sure what I'm trying to say.
Well, what you're trying to say is, but there's got to be something wrong with it.
Give me a sec. Right.
No, you're absolutely right.
No, um... So if the cure is fear, right, then the breakthrough is a loss of fear, right?
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
A cure is fear? Sorry, if the tension is fear, sorry.
If the ailment is fear, then the cure is a breakthrough from fear.
Right, that makes sense.
That makes sense. But...
But...
I'm not sure I... I like great spots and I cannot lie.
Sorry, go on. But I'm not...
I mean, when I think about it, like, in terms of cost-benefit, I mean, there's not a whole lot for me to be fearing, right?
I mean...
Well, let's take the dating thing, for example.
I mean, who are these people on the net anyway to me now at this moment, right?
They're just, you know, a face and a profile, right?
So if I, you know, tell them exactly what I'm interested in and why I'm interested in it and they reject it in some way, so what, right?
What's to fear, right?
What's the fear? What's the fear?
Don't make me come over there.
You know, I'm going to see you in less than a week.
I can't smack you upside the head.
So we've gone from a year of I'm terrified to date to what's the fear?
Oh, Greg!
Aneurysm! Oh, I'm flopping around like a fish on the bottom of a boat.
Okay, yeah. But what if I was really attracted to a mermaid who was a socialist but had anarchist leanings?
Sorry, go on. No, I think that answers my question.
Excellent. Okay, what I'm doing now is I'm just coming back in from the ledge.
So this is good. You know, because I was like, if he has one more question.
But it's okay. Christina took me back in.
And ooh, manacled. Nice.
I'll be back in. Oh, never mind.
We're done. Sorry? Put the screen back on the window.
Put the screen back on the window.
That's right. Any other questions?
No, that was it. It was basically just disgruntlement over 1078.
Excellent. And you gruntled?
Much more gruntled than I was before.
Excellent. We have grunted.
Excellent. Okay.
Well, thank you very much. And if anybody else had any other questions, I – oh, thanks again to Greg M. He's so dreamy that I really do appreciate the – we've got a lot of positive feedback from the dual video thing.
Because it's a nice distraction from me digging in my ear with a fork or a chopstick to see somebody else talking.
So thanks again. And if you do have a listener convo, please get yourself a hold of a webcam to like $30 and it would be great.
We can do this uvoo.com.
You can install the client and we can do actually up to six calls, six-way calls.
So... If you have a combo coming up, grab a hold of a webcam.
Some of the notebooks have them built in now as well.
Or, if you're really quick with an extra sketch, you can email me the pictures and we can sort of splice them in together.
So, if you do get a chance to do that, it's pretty cool technology.
A little bit unstable from time to time, but not too bad.
So, we have time for another question.
If anybody wants to give it a shot.
Don't forget to pick up your copy of Everyday Anarchy.
It's a really nice, cute little book at stores.lulu.com forward slash free domain radio.
It's $8.99.
It will not allow me to retire, but pretty much I retired a year ago, so that doesn't matter too, too much.
And last...
Chance for a question, going twice, comments, issues, you can type them in the chat window if you do not have a microphone or a guy named Mike who will speak for you.
Alright, well thank you everybody so much for a wonderful Sunday show.
I appreciate it. Very interesting and stimulating conversations as always.
And I hope that you have yourselves a wonderful week.
I don't think we have any scintillating calls coming up thanks to those who joined in on the where is my career going call yesterday.
And it was a very interesting conversation.
Thank you so much to the fine gentleman who donated a goodly amount of Thank you again so much to the people who donated.
In May, if you have not donated in May, but you sort of feel like you kind of need to, if you could not wait until the end of June, that would certainly help me do podcasts slightly less clenchy for myself, because it's always nice to be able to relax a little earlier in the month with the income, which... Because, you know, I kind of give up the book income, right, for this.
And it's helping in terms of getting people in.
But, you know, if I could have the books out there, you know, 5,500 plus went out this month.
If you could donate or donate time or money, help publicize the books, there's a freedomainradio.com forward slash referral tool.
Thanks again to James for helping save me from my COBOL coding habits.
But you can go to that.
You can send the books around.
They're all free. It's non-obligatory to people.
You can send the feeds around.
You can send the videos around and so on.
So anything that you can do to help spread Philosophy to people, I think, will be enormously satisfying to you.
And money to me, time to get people interested in particular podcasts or books or the site as a whole, hugely, hugely appreciated.
And I think the sacrifices, to some degree, we can call them sacrifices that we're all making to help spread this amazing conversation to people, will be amply rewarded by having high schools named after us in the future.
Thank you, everybody, so much.
And we will try and record some of the barbecue so that you can get the sights and sounds of me bursting into flames and running around screaming like the aforementioned Japanese schoolgirl.
So thank you again so much for a wonderful, wonderful life and a wonderful, wonderful week.
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